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Imagine for just a moment that on some parallel dimension, Cammy Dunaway was not throwing imaginary frissbees at a badly rendered puppy called "Peach" or beating her boss Regis off an imaginary platform with a imaginary foam bat. A parallel universe where Regis kept his promise (or rather DID NOT LIE) about the presence of a game for the hardcore gamer, or at the very least, show a true hardcore game that is in the works, a game that would have made a small difference if at least had been demoed in front of a crowd of people that, of all things, is made up of hardcore gamers. There was also a internet audience that somehow found the time to tune into a internet live feed (not an easy thing if you think about it) and wasted an hour of their lives because they... no, WE are hardcore enough to care. We did not want to see Cammy Dunaway pretend being cool riding on the Balance Board while being cheered up by a suspiciously happy (read stoned) Shaun White. We didn't want to see a rehash of Animal Crossing or pretend that we should care about a add on that turns the Wiimote into the most expensive controller in the market, and for sure we did not care about the baby rattler that Wii music really is. NO we wanted to see games like MAD WORLD, we wanted to see Cammy Dunaway show us, the hardcore, how she ripped the heart out of some street thug and chainsaw some criminal punk in half while blood sprayed every which way. Why didn't Nintendo show Mad World, a game that would have sent the crowd into an uproar. And why wasn't Fatal Frame 4 shown at all? A game that has great visuals and pushes the hardware it is running on and it is the only worthwhile survival horror game for the Wii. And what about The Conduit? if a game as crappy as Red Steel was able to sell in great numbers, imagine if a competent FPS with great controls and graphics were to be release, why isn't Nintendo picking this one up for publishing?

There are hardcore games for the Wii, clearly in small numbers, but they are there to show that the Wii can deliver a great gameplay experience if developers dedicate the resourses and the time to it. But no, Nintendo is too busy turning the DS into a recipe book, the Wii into a Yoga trainer and all the while raking in the money by the truck load of the profits it gets from selling overpriced Gamecube tech, and creating a false drought of hardware to keep the price up. Really, what other explanation there could be for such a ridiculous situation. It has been 2 years, 2 YEARS!!! and Nintendo expects us to believe that their factories are not able to produce and meet the demand of a console whose guts are 7 years out of date and that has for internal memory 512 Megs! You can find pendrives with more capacity than that in a drugstore! Let's face it, if you are a hardcore gamer and you picked up the Wii, you are out of luck. First Party wise, we do not exist for Nintendo, that role now falls upon companies like Platinum Games, Tecmo and others to pick up the slack an occupy the territory Nintendo gladly abandoned. This year the Wii is Casualand and except for a few exceptions, it will be a long while before Nintendo can wow us over again. Hope you like to shear sheeps on Guinness World Records ... Good Lord!

For what is worth, at least on that other parallel dimension Cammy Dunaway is getting an standing ovation from a enthralled crowd after seeing the best press conference in the history of Nintendo and of E3 ... and booth babes never left. Damn you Erwin Schrödinger.

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StarCraft's Terran Space Marine. I decided to use this piece in particular to test out a few texturing techniques. Also, for once I wanted to see one of these guys on a brand spanking new armor. Too bad it won't stay that way after a few Zerg and Protoss encounters, but I'm quite sure he'll do alright. Pass the Turtle Wax !

[UPDATE] I'm kinda surprised as to how many of you took notice upon the little image on the Marine's left shoulder and as OrangeBluez and SemiMaster have kindly pointed out, it is a previous illustration of mine which you can see here

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Another year, another E3 and this year's expo will be remembered as the one where the general feeling was: “Hey hardcore gamers, you SUCK!!!” I'm not going to go into a long rant about how E308 went, We all saw the press conferences and we all have reached our conclusions about them. My comic strip pretty much sums up what is my view of the whole thing and that view goes beyond the speech ballons contents. What I'll do is mention a few thing about each conference that I felt completely disgusted about:

1. Microsoft capacity to blatantly copy its competitors ideas. They have prospered over the years on the PC market by plagiarizing or downright stealing its rivals ideas and procedures so why change their Modus Operandi now, right? and if that doesn't work, just buy them.

2. Nintendo absolute disregard for the fans that helped them stay afloat during the harsh times the company went thru last generation. If I were to use a metaphor to describe how Nintendo is treating its long time followers, it would be just the same as a multi stage rocket treats its engines after reaching the stratosphere; by dumping them! leaving them behind to burn up in the atmosphere. And here is another metaphor, the Wimmote rubber grip is to a condom what the Wii Motion Plus is to a buttplug! And might as well be, because by making this device Nintendo just uttered a collective “BEND OVER” to all Wii owners! Oh Nintendo execs, you are such geniuses, now every Nintendo fan will have the priviledge to pay you $30 for a function that the Wiimote should have had 2 years ago!! And with a single gesture (I'm thinking on a raised middle finger) you have made all Wii software released to this date, and that under development by third parties gimp by default!

3. Sony's "solid" press conference. Einstein said: “Everything is relative”. Just as a salty cracker would be deemed solid in relative terms when compared to a turd that has been under the rain for 2 hours! No megaton announcements just promises and pleas to the fans to be patient. Sony, you can't keep someone that has spended money on the most expensive gaming console on the market happy on promises alone! If you can't differentiate your catalog of games with a respectable number of exclusives then what is there to differentiate the PS3 from its direct competitor?

This year E3 has been the most dissapointing to date, that is almost an universal consensus to all game fans. E3 has become (here is another metaphor, I'm on a roll guys!) a car that has ran out of gas and its moving on inertia alone. The driver knows it, the passangers have a near certainty that that is the case and unless a gas station is within reach pretty damn soon, that car is gonna end up on a ditch, and to tell you the truth, I don't feel like hitchhiking.